By Right of Purchase Part 43

"I think a little would naturally depend upon what Charley wants."

Carrie laughed. "Well," she said, "we will ascertain his views. He is not as a rule very diffident about expressing them."

Tom Gallwey, somewhat lightly dressed, drove up just then in a waggon piled with grain bags.

"Where is Charley?" she asked.

Gallwey smiled. "Lifting four-bushel wheat sacks into a waggon. He has been doing it most of the afternoon, too, and I almost think it would be wise if you looked after him."

He drove on, and Carrie attempted to frown. "Isn't he exasperating?" she said. "The doctor told him he was to take it very easy for at least another month, and he promised me he would do nothing hard."

They went on towards the thresher, walking delicately among the flinty stubble, until they reached the edge of the whirling dust. Overhead the straw was rus.h.i.+ng down through a haze of smoke. Below, half-naked men toiled savagely about the big machine. Steam was roaring from the engine, for the threshers were firing recklessly, and the thudding clank of the engine and hum of the clattering mill were almost deafening.

There was a constant pa.s.sing upwards of golden sheaves, a constant downward stream of straw, and the dusty air seemed filled with toiling men and kicking teams.

Then Carrie went forward into the midst of the press, for it was naturally where the activity was fiercest that she expected to find her husband. He was with another harvester pitching up big sacks into a waggon. As a bushel of wheat weighs approximately sixty pounds, it was an occupation that demanded much from the man engaged in it. She touched him on the shoulder, looking at him reproachfully when he swung round and let the bag drop.

"Charley," she said, "you remember your promise?"

The twinkle crept into Leland's eyes. "Oh, yes," he said, "I told you I'd do nothing hard. When you know the trick of it, this thing's quite easy."

It did not appear so to Carrie. "Come away at once," she said. "You are to do no more this afternoon."

Leland made a little whimsical gesture of resignation, but it is possible that he was not altogether sorry; for, though he had recovered rapidly since the affair with the whisky boys, his full strength had not come back, and he had been lifting grain bags for several hours. In any event, he put on his jacket, and, brus.h.i.+ng a little of the dust off his person, went away with her. They sat down together with Eveline Annersly, beneath one of the straw-pile granaries that stood in a row amidst the stubble.

"Aunt Eveline is thinking of going away," said Carrie.

Leland started, and there was no doubt that his concern was genuine.

"Oh," he said, "the thing's quite out of the question. She told me she was going to stay with us as long as we wanted her."

"I did," said Eveline Annersly. "Still, I really think you can do without me now."

Both Carrie and her husband knew exactly what she meant, but it was the latter who had the courage to admit it.

"Madam--" he began.

Eveline Annersly checked him with a smile. "The t.i.tle has gone out of fas.h.i.+on, with a few other old-fas.h.i.+oned things you still seem to cling to in the newest West. I do not like it--from you."

Leland made her a bow that included Carrie. "Well," he said, "Aunt Eveline--and that, because of the humanity in it, is, perhaps, a finer t.i.tle--I'm talking now, and you are going to listen to me. You were kind to me at Barrock-holme, where I was what you call an outsider, and you gave me the greatest thing I ever had, or that ever could come to me.

You didn't find it easy. Things were far from promising when you were half-way through, but you stood by me, and now do you think there is anything that would be too much for me to do for you?"

There was a little silence. It was the first time the fact that all three recognised had been put into words, and a faint flush mantled Eveline Annersly's cheeks. Still, her eyes were gentle, and there was no doubt that the bond between the little faded lady, upon whom the stamp of station was plain, and the gaunt prairie farmer, with the hard hands and the bronzed face, sprinkled with the dust of toil, was a wondrous strong one. In England it would, perhaps, have seemed incomprehensible, an anachronism; but amidst the long rows of sheaves he had called up out of the prairie there was nothing strange in their communion. After all, it is manhood that counts in the new Northwest.

"Well," she said, quietly, "it was a great responsibility, and there were times when I was horribly afraid. Still, events have proved me right, and I think it is the greatest compliment I could pay you when I say that it was to make Carrie safe I did it."

Carrie said nothing, but there was faith and confidence in her eyes when she turned them for a moment upon her husband as he spoke again.

"And now you talk of going away," he said. "Aunt Eveline, we want you here always, both of us. You stood by us through the struggle, for it has been a hard one this year, and now I want you to share in the result of it. Oh, I know, in some ways it's a hard country for a woman brought up like you, but things will be different at Prospect with wheat going up, and there's one great argument you can't get over--what Carrie Leland is content with is sufficient for any woman on this earth."

They had just decided that she was to stay, when Sergeant Grier rode up.

He swung himself out of the saddle, and tossed Leland a bundle of papers.

"I got one or two at the settlement, and Custer asked me to hand you the rest," he said. "I guess you'll be glad to see that wheat is jumping up.

It seems as if everybody was buying. Still, that wasn't what I came to talk about."

"You don't want me at the trial of the rustlers' friends?" asked Leland, impatiently.

Grier laughed. "I guess we'll fix them without you. It's quite easy to find out things, now the gangs are broken up. I heard from Regina the other day, and the man who got the bullet in his leg is already doing something useful--making roads, I think. The other fellow is going out with the work gang as soon as he's strong enough."

"But if they let them out, won't they run away?" asked Carrie.

"I guess not," said the Sergeant, drily. "They hitch a nice little weight to their ankles when it appears advisable, and a warder with a shot-gun keeps his eye on them." Then he turned to Leland. "I want a few particulars about that last fire you had."

"You'll get them after supper. In the meanwhile there's something Tom Gallwey wants to talk to you about. Hadn't you better put up your horse?"

Sergeant Grier appeared willing to do so, for the fare at Prospect was proverbially good. Presently he moved off to the stables. Carrie then remembered that she had several matters to attend to. The commissariat required supervision when there were threshers about. She, however, made Leland promise that he would do nothing further, and left him with Eveline Annersly. He turned to the latter with an apologetic smile as he took up one or two of the papers the Sergeant had brought.

"I'm rather interested in the markets. You don't mind?" he said.

Eveline Annersly said she didn't, and watched him with pleasure as he glanced at the papers in turn, for it was evident that the news was rea.s.suring.

"They've got the bears this time--screwed up tight," he said. "Two of the big men gone under--couldn't get the wheat to cover, and it looks to me as if there is a bull movement everywhere. I can't remember prices ever stiffening this way before when the wheat was pouring in, and, if the bulls can swing the thing over harvest, there's no saying what they may go to."

"I'm glad you're satisfied," said Eveline Annersly. "Still, your observations are not very clear to me."

Leland looked at her with a smile. "The fact is that it seems quite likely I'm going to be comparatively rich. I'm 'most where I stood this time last year already, and if the market doesn't break away under the harvest, prices are going up and up. One thing's certain--Carrie's going to have a month in New York."

He stopped a moment and looked at his companion steadily. "It's rather a curious thing that, when I suggested she might like a run over to Barrock-holme, she didn't seem to want to go. And there's another point that's puzzling me. When I mention the crescent or the pearls, why does she want to change the subject?"

Eveline Annersly decided to tell him. "The two things go together. It happens now and then that a woman has to choose between her relations and her husband. Carrie chose you. Those jewels are, you know, worth a good deal of money, and, while they belong to her, there is reason for believing that, unless she had shown herself resolute, Jimmy would have had them instead. In fact, I have a notion that her father found it distressingly inconvenient to send them. One can raise money on such things in England."

A deeper hue crept into Leland's sun-darkened face. "I understand now--that is, some of it," he said. "It would be better if you made the whole thing clear."

"Well, there was a time when you were rather hard pressed for a thousand pounds. Carrie, if I remember, found you a much larger sum. But she evidently did not tell you where her jewels went."

The man's eyes glowed. When at last he spoke, there was a thrill in his voice.

"It hurts me, in a way, to think of it--but what does that matter?" he said. "Her jewels, everything she had . . . when I was in a tight place, she brought them all to me. . . . It was the two thousand pounds that saved me. . . . Shall I have time enough to get even with her in all my life, Aunt Eveline?"

Eveline Annersly smiled rea.s.suringly. "One ought to do a good many little things in a lifetime, and, after all, it is deeds of grat.i.tude that please us most."

They went in some little time afterwards. While they sat at supper together, one of Leland's distant neighbours came in.

"I've ridden straight from the settlement. Macartney had a wire from Winnipeg just before I left," he said. "Wheat jumped up another cent to-day."

Leland looked across the table at Gallwey. "Tom," he said, "before I fell sick, my broker sent along an offer for about half the crop. I wouldn't sell. But I have wondered once or twice if the other man made another bid."

"He did," said Gallwey, with a quiet smile. "There were, as you may remember, two or three weeks when we told you very little, and you wouldn't have understood anything during the first of them. At the time everybody round here was anxious to sell--that is, except Mrs. Leland.

By her instructions, I wrote your broker that you meant to hold on to every bushel."